smartWork Suite
Core Documentation
0. Documentation purpose
This documentation aims to provide an overview of the functionalities of HRForecast’s “smartWork” Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Suite.
It sets out the aim and purpose of the smartWork as a whole and its individual modules, and describes the core features it has to offer. HRForecast warrants that its clients have access to the features described in this document (subject to the specific module and “package” they purchased, see Chapter 2 of this document). As HRForecast commits to constantly enhancing the functionality of its applications, this document focuses on those features which make sure that the applications fulfill their primary purpose and is by no means meant as a comprehensive description of all available features at any given time. For detailed information of all available features as well as in-depth instructions related to their functioning, please refer to our Help Center, which is a constantly updated repository of feature description.
1. smartWork Suite concept and scope
smartWork is an application suite that enables companies to make their workforce fit for the future, by offering an end-to-end Strategic Workforce Planning and Skill Management solution.
The suite consists of 3 core modules and a user management module:
smartPlan is a Strategic Workforce Planning tool allowing for the analysis of the impact of various business “drivers” on future workforce needs in various scenarios. Through the use of driver models, it allows for the modeling of complex business scenarios and the planning of workforce capacity needs on that basis. Through its analytics capabilities, it provides ready-to-use insights to inform “build, buy or borrow” decisions.
smartPeople is a Skill1 Management tool allowing for the skill assessment of individuals or group of individuals within a company in comparison to the skill requirements defined for their job; furthermore, it allows for skill-based matching of individual user profiles to relevant internal job and task postings and learning opportunities. On an aggregated level, it helps organizations to understand the skillset of their workforce, connect their people and promote content and activities for building a future-fit workforce.
smartLibrary is a module for storing job and skill information used in smartPeople, coming both from HRForecast’s crawling of external data sources and the client’s own job and skill taxonomy as required.
Ludi Cloud is the user management module of smartWork, where user access can be given, revoked or edited, as well as general settings can be defined for the whole suite.
smartWork can be used as web-tool or as mobile app. The usage and functionalities in both versions are identical to each other.
1The term “skills” in this context includes qualifications, knowledge, abilities and competencies.
2. Editions
The smartWork suite can be purchased by individual modules, the core features of which are grouped into packages. A package is a specific collection of features that HRForecast makes available for a customer. Besides the below description of standard packages, custom packages can be configured on a case-by-case basis; in these cases, the specific list of features are described in HRForecast’s offer document. HRForecast warrants 98% availability (as defined in the Master Service and Subscription Agreement) of the below described core features for its clients.
2.1. smartPlan module
2.1.1. Enterprise (Scenario Planning) edition
The primary aim of the package is to facilitate the strategic scenario planning of future workforce demand by:
- Planning one or multiple scenarios within one or multiple planning units;
- Defining an unlimited number of planning attributes;
- Defining demand driver models through driver values, and assigning different driver models to different roles within a planning unit;
- Making different leave types visible for the supply analysis;
- Making gaps visible and providing analytics insights through a dashboard both on a planning unit and an aggregated organizational level.
2.1.2. Gap Closing edition (FUTURE RELEASE)
The primary aim of the edition is, further to the features included in the Gap Closing edition, to define gap closing actions and link these to up- and reskilling activities by:
- Defining gap closing measures in terms of Development, Recruitment or Early retirement for the identified workforce supply shortages or surpluses;
- Identifying development and reskilling opportunities by considering the skill proximity between various job roles;
- Linking development and reskilling opportunities to potential career paths.
2.1.3. Cost and Controlling edition (FUTURE RELEASE)
The primary aim of the edition is, further to the features included in the Gap Closing edition, to connect Strategic Workforce Planning with the operational planning by:
- Including personnel cost information in the workforce planning;
- Providing a possibility for ongoing controlling of the defined gap closing measures;
- Enabling the direct integration of smartPlan with other Human Capital Management or related tools in both directions.
2.2. smartPeople module
2.2.1. Essential (Skill Assessment) edition
The primary aim of the edition is to facilitate obtaining transparency over the supply of skills available in the organization by:
- Enabling the creation of skill profiles through manual skill assessment and automated skill uploads;
- Offering Artificial Intelligence-based skill recommendations based on HRForecast’s external benchmark skill database and the client’s own skills;
- Enabling the search for talents across the organization with specific skills or a combination of skills;
- Providing an individual and an aggregated view of available skills and skill gaps within the organization.
2.2.2. Professional (Talent Marketplace) edition
The primary aim of the edition is, further to the features included in the Skill Assessment edition, to connect the workforce and create visibility over internal opportunities by:
- Offering the possibility to post jobs or tasks as part of a company-internal labor market and find the best candidates based on a skill matching engine;
- Offering batch uploads and import pipelines to facilitate the connection of the smartWork talent marketplace with further applications;
- Making career path suggestions, related development and job opportunities based on the current job and skill profiles and future plans (FUTURE RELEASE).
2.2.3. Premium (Talent Development) edition
The primary aim of the edition is, further to the features included in the Talent Marketplace edition, to enable Learning and Development of the workforce by:
- Offering personalized learning recommendations based on the user’s development goals;
- Having access to the catalog of some of the largest external training content providers with relevant skill tagging;
- Offering integration with the client’s Learning Management System;
- Enabling API interfaces with other tools to create a connected learning & development technology ecosystem (FUTURE RELEASE).
2.3. smartLibrary module
The smartLibrary module is available in only one version and is automatically part of the subscription when a client purchases licenses for either the smartPlan and/or the smartPeople module. Its core features are:
- HRForecast Job library containing a constantly growing number of market data-based jobs and skill profiles based on the continuous crawling of external data;
- Client-specific Job libraries allowing for the definition of client-specific jobs and linking them with skills from either the HRForecast or the client-specific skill library;
- HRForecast Skill library containing a constantly growing number of market data-based skills with the indication of future importance;
- Client-specific Skill libraries allowing for the definition of client-specific skills;
- Training libraries with a list of trainings including content from external learning content providers as well as client-specific trainings as needed.
3. Professional Services
Upon purchasing any of the above-mentioned applications in any of the Editions, customers get access to various services HRForecast provides as part of the license fee. These include:
- Access to the HelpCenter of HRForecast with detailed descriptions, clickthrough videos, tooltips and best practices;
- Regular updates and notifications about new and upcoming features within all of the applications of HRForecast as well as short descriptions of these;
- Access to HRForecast’s application support structure, reached by sending an e-mail to support@hrforecast.de;
- On demand or as agreed with an HRForecast Customer Success Manager, however not more frequently than 30 minutes twice a week, regular virtual meetings, providing consulting support around the customer’s use of the HRForecast applications.
Any professional service not listed above, including but not limited to Onboarding support, the preparation, facilitation or participation in strategy or process consulting workshops, the creation of tutorial videos, client-specific or -branded training material, as well as any Market Intelligence related deliverables such as Future Job Profiles, are expressly excluded from the scope of the professional services covered by the license fee, and are to be purchased separately based on a related offer submitted by HRForecast.
4. Role Concept
User profiles set up within Ludi Cloud are valid within all modules of smartWork (subject to the user’s organization having purchased these modules). The roles and access rights however differ across the modules.
smartPlan differentiates between Admin and User roles; this latter can be added to one or more different planning units with either Owner, Editor or Viewer rights. These can differ in the case of one and the same user across different planning units.
smartPeople differentiates between Admin, Moderator, HR and User roles; the differentiation between each role being mainly related to the degree of information one is able to obtain about user profiles other than their own.
smartLibrary is only accessible for Admin users.
For a detailed description of the role concept, please refer to our Help Center.
5. Data Protection
5.1. Terms of use
The terms of use and privacy policy states how the data is handled and processed within smartWork. The HRForecast Terms of use, displayed by default upon the first login by a new user, can be changed to client specific texts within Ludi Cloud.
The users have to actively accept the “Terms of Use and Data Privacy Statement” and have the possibility to review the document at any time in Ludi Cloud.
5.2. Deletion policy
smartWork has established rules and methods to ensure that the user data is deleted in the right time in accordance with the European General Data Protection Requirements (GDPR). The following policies have been implemented in the system.
User profiles can be deleted in two ways:
- if the user deletes their profile by themselves or
- if the user leaves the company.
A user can at any time delete their profile, and thereby make all their data inaccessible after deleting. Once deleted, the user will be removed from the app. All data stored in data-backups will be deleted after 30 days.
In the case of the user leaving the company, their Ludi Cloud profile and user data will be automatically deleted and related user data will also be deleted as explained above.